MSI MEGA 651
MSI FX5900-VTD
RocketRAID 1520
RocketRAID 404
FIC AU13 nF2
LanParty KT400A
AS Ceramiqué
TV Wonder VE
AR Wireless HP

Integrated Peripheral Performance

With so many features built in, there is probably no need to add too many add-on cards. We'll take a look at some of the onboard items, and see how they will affect system performance. Tests will be done with the same hardware configuration as the rest of the benchmarks earlier.

IGP

I chose not to do 100 benchmarks with the IGP, because let's face it; we know it will be weak. We won't leave you hanging though, so here's some FPS action for yeah with UT2003.

UT2003 - IGP Testing - 1024 Resolution, High Detail

At under 20FPS, the onboard video will not cut it for any modern day action game. We're not going to waste time with AA results (it was 8.7 FPS), since the IGP is just not powerful enough. If you intend to do any serious action gaming, pick up a gaming card.

Sound tests

Next on the list is the audio. We downloaded and installed to test its CPU utilization.
Like past tests using the Realtek solution, CPU utilization was fairly high thoughout the DirectSound3D tests. CPU utilization never got to 10%, but it did average in the 5% - 7% range, which is a lot higher than the <2% averages we've seen with the nForce 2. This is a synthetic benchmark though, and since I know all of you enjoy a game or two, let's see how the sound will affect UT 2003 performance.

The [H]ardocp tool has an option to enable and disable sound during testing.

UT2003 - 640x480, Min Detail

The Realtek takes quite a bit out of the MEGA 651's performance when it is enabled. Granted, the likelyhood of our readers playing at 640x480 is low, so let's see how it affects performance at a higher resolution and detail level.

UT2003 - 1280x1024, Max Detail

Much better this time around, but there is still a noticeable drop in our benchmarks. Real-world gaming shouldn't be affected though, thus we're concluding that the CPU utilization should be acceptable for the majority of users.

In terms of sound quality, I found gaming to be very acceptable, and ever since Scott posted in our forums how much he enjoyed Evanescence - Fallen, I've been listening to that quite a bit as well. The music is a mix of calm and fast paced rock, and the singer's haunting vocals played out quite well through my Logitech THX Z-560's. There does seem to be some cracking though when there is serious disk activity, and I have yet to determine the cause of it.

One thing I should mention is that I found music quality to be richer when using the HiFi portion of the MEGA 651. The highs were higher, and the bass seemed to have more kick to it. This was using the Logitechs though, and listening to music through the MEGA 2.0 speakers was not as enjoyable.

Network Performance

We used DU Meter to test the networking speed, and Windows Task Manager for CPU usage. We copied a variety of multimedia files, varying in size of 30MB to as much as 800MB per file from the IC7 machine, to our MEGA 651.

Download speeds averaged about 9.36MB/sec, which is about the average with the type of files used in previous tests. CPU utilization averaged about 10%, with 8% being the low mark, and 12% being the high.

Next Page - Final Words

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